Stephen Platten is a Principal Consultant at Inspired Testing, a Dynamic Technologies group company, and is part of the Test Architect Team under Leon Lodewyks, Chief Technology Officer. Platten’s roles are to do the initial client engagement in order to understand their needs and thus help the teams to deliver, and to work directly with clients, creating test strategies and bespoke solutions for their specific challenges.
Aside from client work, Platten and his team are involved in training, competency work, best practice, and creating content for Inspired Testing’s Community of Practice (CoP), social media, podcast, and YouTube channels.
For Platten, the most challenging part of his job is the context switching. His days are varied, and he can go from creating a best-practice document on a tool to a pre-sales call with a client, and providing support to a team with a technical challenge. But it’s also inspirational. He says, “I enjoy working on the CoP and the Testing Guild, seeing it grow and having our people engage with it and find value in it. None of my work can be called boring, but I would say the constant need to upskill and learn is the most interesting part of it. I read a lot of online content and books and I’m constantly completing training courses to keep my skills sharp and current.”
Working at Inspired Testing is rewarding and also often surprising. Platten says, “This is not somewhere I thought I would get to as my career path into testing wasn’t a traditional one. To end up in a world-class testing company such as Inspired Testing is beyond what I thought I could achieve.”
Inspired Testing’s ethos of diversity by inclusion is something Platten admires and respects. “It means that we’re all different but share a common nature, and what we have in common is how we connect with others,” he explains. “I am diagnosed as neurodiverse, so to me it’s important that everyone is offered the same opportunities, regardless of their background or life experience, and that their unique differences aren’t a limiting factor. At Inspired Testing, their ability to work well is all that matters.”
Known as ‘The Stoic Tester’, Platten follows the principles of Stoicism – a philosophy popular in ancient Rome. Emperor Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic and Platten often turns to his words, “The obstacle is the way,” when faced with life’s challenges. “This means that what impedes action also advances action, so do the hard thing and the right thing at all times. Stoicism is important to me because it gives me something to fall back on when making a decision,” says Platten.
He maintains that the Stoicism philosophy holds great value for the workplace. “It teaches you how to cope in the face of adversity, accept what we can't change, change what we can and ‘seize the day’. As I learnt about it, I realised how useful its teachings are for my personal life and my professional career. Over time, the handle of the ‘Stoic Tester’ was born as a way for me to promote the philosophy and help fellow testers and QAs. The principles are simply that the key to a good and happy life is to live in accordance with nature, which means being someone who has moral courage, honour, and virtue.” When it comes to anyone wanting to be part of the tech space, Platten has these Stoic words of advice, “Focus on what you can control and don’t just try to be good at your job, try to be a good person.”
In his spare time, Platten is part of a Warhammer 40k competitive gaming team called DeadRedGaming. The team plays at tournaments and even has their own YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@topofthetableminis). Platten explains, “Warhammer 40k is a competitive tabletop wargame where you attend tournaments as a single player or team and play to decide the winner. Superman actor Henry Cavill is one of the game’s best-known players. Aside from that I do body building and enjoy any strength-related sport such as powerlifting or strong man events.”